Chapter-2-2

⁠—⁠—⁠— II ⁠—⁠—⁠—

Guin found the inside of the simple house to be stark and gloomy, with a heavy chill in the air of the kind peculiar to stone buildings. In its construction, the building was hardly more advanced than the pit-dwellings of the Sem. There was only one room; the morning light spilled in through three windows cut into the walls, splashing across an earthen floor that was bare save for a scattering of wolf skins laid around the central fire pit.

The elder had been placed upon one of the skins by the pit, and his keen piercing eyes now greeted the leopard-headed warrior. Kah motioned for Guin to join him, waved off the two guards, and began to speak before they had left the room.

“Brave Guin, as you have commanded, lagon now rise together. We leave our village, and head towards the land to which you lead us. There we will destroy your enemies. Whether it is victory or defeat that awaits us, this is the last morning we shall ever see this valley.”

“I do not—” Guin began, but Kah lifted a six-fingered hand for silence.

“This is not unusual for lagon, Lagon are not bound to one place. Until we find the promised land, any place we live, we live only for the now, not for the ever. Aqrra sends us messengers, once every two or three generations. The last came when I was but a child. One of our people went out into the desert, and returned bearing the sign. Then a great journey began, and in the end we arrived here, in this place between the mountains, where we built this village of stone. Lagon do this. We will leave this village after this morning, and travel far to the place where the bearer of the sign leads, and there we will begin a new home. Should it be a desert, we will live in the desert. Should it be rock, we will live in the rock. Should it be a mountain, we will live on the mountain.”

“I see,” Guin said, nodding. “This must be why no one knows where the Lagon live—like running water, and as the legends say, you’re never long in one place.”

“It is so. Aqrra has shown us many lands, but none yet has been the promised land. Though we may think so at first, in time something comes to tell us of our error, and only then do we know that the latest sign from Aqrra was merely another portion of our journey, and that though we have not reached the promised land, we have taken a step closer to it. And so we live in our new home until the next sign comes.”

Guin sat in silence, watching the old Lagon’s eyes turn expressive beneath his bushy white brows. Something about the lives of these strange beings, following signs from their god, knowing that each might not be the true sign, again and again abandoning the homes where they had lived for some generations, touched him deeply.

“We are the ones who wait,” Kah went on quietly. “This is what lagon means. Since time immemorial we have believed it is our destiny to wait, our destiny to follow. Yet, if that destiny is at its end with this new sign… How long we have waited! How often fought amongst ourselves, torn between those who would follow the sign, and those unwilling to abandon the land they had worked for since they were born… If—if you are indeed the last, the one who will lead lagon to the promised land…”

Kah’s voice trailed off into overwhelmed silence. He lowered his head, intertwining his twelve fingers, at a loss for words to describe what it would mean for his people if Guin were the final messenger.

A thought twisted suddenly in Guin’s mind, and he trembled. What if he was wrong? What if he was persuading the Lagon to abandon their village and travel far across the desert for nothing—to go to their own deaths as likely as not, in a battle that was not their own? For a moment, he doubted his right to move an entire people like this. The Lagon believed he was the long-awaited messenger chosen by Aqrra. But Guin had no idea whether he had indeed been so chosen.

The “sign of Aqrra” that he bore was little more than a strange object he had stumbled across in the valley of salt. True, he might have found it because some divine force intended that he should. Or he might be nothing more than a giant fraud. If it came to pass that both the Sem and the Lagon were defeated in this struggle with the Mongauli army, and their people slaughtered, he would be no god leading them to a promised land, but indeed a demon, a minion of Doal leading them to death, and despair, and destruction.

“How can you know the messenger of Aqrra, wise Kah?” Guin asked, doubts racing through his mind.

Kah’s answer came simply and without hesitation. “He carries the sign of Aqrra.”

“Like this thing I have?”

“Yes. Sometimes its appearance is slightly different, yet all resemble the one you bear.”

“And how do the messengers come by their signs? Is it by some revelation from Aqrra?” Guin found himself asking the sage. Though he half-feared revealing too much of his ignorance about Aqrra and dashing the trust he had only so recently gained, he was unable to contain his curiosity.

He could not have been more surprised by the elder’s answer.

“They obtain it as you did. A glimmer catches their eyes as they walk through the desert; they fall, they reach, and when they rise it is in their hands.”

“What?” Guin exclaimed. “You mean they just pick it up?”

“Indeed. The finding of Aqrra’s sign is a revelation nonetheless. Was this not the way you came upon the sign you bear?”

“That’s just how it happened,” Guin dropped his pretense. “To be honest, I know nothing of Aqrra—had not even heard of Aqrra before coming here. For such a person as I to have a revelation from Aqrra, to become a messenger… Can one be such a thing without knowing it?”

“Of course,” Kah answered. “Yet what has made me think that you may be the true messenger, the last to lead the lagon, is that of the many times those claiming to be messengers of Aqrra have appeared before us—many of whom were little more than pretenders and would-be kings—in all the long years of the lagon, this is the first time that the one who has come is not one of us. Not only are you not lagon, but your leopard head marks you as one not of this world. It is the first I have ever heard of such a thing.”

Guin made no reply, instead sinking deep into thought.

The familiar questions resurfaced in his mind: Who am I? Whence did I come, and why? For what purpose was I given life?

The questions hit him with such force that he forgot even the urgency that gnawed within him over the need to expedite the Lagon’s march. So many questions… Even if he were to disregard his unknown origins, the leopard-man found himself surrounded by far too much mystery to be easily explained. What was the source of the bizarre knowledge that came to him in shreds, like scraps doled out to a dog by a master’s hand— whose hand? He spoke the tongue of the Lagon, the tongue of the Sem, even the language of the Middle Country, yet he could not for his life tell which was his mother tongue. And the things he knew about the Middle Country—sometimes his memory seemed so clear, even though, to the best of his knowledge, he had never even been there.

The mystery did not end with what he carried inside him. He seemed to be involved in more inexplicable events than he cared to remember. How to explain the cyclone that carried him all the way to the Dog’s Head, or his encounter with the ancient king of the wolves there—not to mention his finding and picking up the sign of Aqrra, placing it in his belt without a second thought, and drawing it out at just the moment that could save him? It was all too much coincidence for him to accept—indeed, no erudite man would be likely to believe it had happened at all. Yet it had.

And though his form, his great leopard head, made him an object of fear and mistrust among those he met, who frequently regarded him as a monstrosity, it seemed to him somehow right that he should wear it—as though he were merely following the orders of some greater power, moving according to the will of something so vast that no man could truly know it. Contemplating this possibility, Guin trembled.

If his speculations were correct, then he was no man possessed of a free will and moving according to his own wishes. Though he might feel that he was free, he was in fact little more than an oversized puppet, manipulated from the sky, or perhaps from below the earth—a marionette chosen to complete his stated task and no more.

He knew he should not dwell on such matters, yet it was impossible to stop. If it were true, and he was nothing more than a finger upon the hand of fate, he had no guarantee that whatever controlled him was not evil. What if that giant entity pushing him along through the world was not Janos or Jarn, the ancient wielder of fate’s skein, but a servant of Doal, source of evils, or perhaps even Doal himself?

A shiver ran unbidden down Guin’s spine. Kah the Wise turned a knowing gaze in his direction, marking how the warrior’s neck tensed and trembled.

“As we use tools, so does fate use us,” the ancient wilding said comfortingly. “Even if the revelation of Aqrra you have brought to us leads us not down the good path, but the bad, and even if many of us fall in the battle you have commanded of us, we will not call you a false messenger. It is vital that we follow the word of Aqrra, no matter what the consequences; for the consequences do not matter. What matters is that we are led by Aqrra, and follow Aqrra’s word. Doing so is the reason our people exist.”

Kah’s simple words were filled with the highest kind of faith, and they surprised Guin greatly. “What is this Aqrra that holds so much power over your people?” he asked, his voice barely more than a whimper. “Is it a god? Or a man? Or something that has never been in this world? Tell me, why do the Lagon follow the lead of Aqrra so faithfully, without question?”

“Soon preparations will be complete, and we will be ready to leave this village,” Kah said evasively, his mouth slowly curving into a smile. “Brave Guin, I see you are troubled, and have been for some time. I wonder, what is it that worries you? Have you made some promise that wears at your heart? Even when it was decided that we would join you, I saw not a moment’s break from this trouble in your eyes.”

“In truth, I am afraid I’ve run out of time,” Guin told him, the admission made easier by Kah’s keen perception. “To my allies I swore that I would return with the Lagon by sunfall tonight. When that time is up, there will not only be great danger to me; the twins of Parros, the little prince and princess who accompanied me across the desert, will be killed. Yet the sun is already in the sky, and we are far beyond the Dog’s Head, and there is no way, save magic, by which I might hope to bring your warriors to the field of battle by nightfall today—for it is a distance that would take a horse two days to cross.”

As he spoke, Guin felt the unease clutch at his chest with renewed vigor, and he thrust back his head and growled toward the sky.

For a while, the elder said nothing. He seemed to be deep in thought, but at last he nodded slowly, and opened his eyes. “If that is the case,” he said, his voice as solemn as though he were uttering a sacred oath, “then we must make haste. Brave Guin—lagon are no common people. Many are the wonders that befall us. The revelations of Aqrra are but one of these. Deep, too, is our knowledge of this land of Nospherus, more than all other peoples combined. We may make the journey in time, or we may not. That is for Aqrra to decide. Brave Guin, later you must come to me and you must tell me of this place you wish to take us, you must describe it as best you can.”

“I shall. But, if you do not intend some great sorcery, this place to which I take you now is a journey of ten days distant, perhaps more. It will take a full day merely to cross the Dog’s Head.” Guin frowned grimly. “Oh, but the Lady of Mongauli is right…” he muttered fiercely. “She chases after the Pearls of Parros unceasingly, and if her warriors cannot claim the secret of transport the twins hold, they will kill them—innocent children!—so that no one else might claim it in her stead.

“The secret the twins hold is too great, impossibly great—so powerful it could carry them from the burning Crystal Palace all the way to the Roodwood in the blink of an eye. How many generals, how many kings, would not sell their soul one thousand times over for the chance to wield such power…”

By the time he finished speaking, Guin’s words had fallen to the faintest of whispers.

Kah the Wise looked on in silence. When he spoke, it was not in answer to Guin. “We will do what we can, and only Aqrra knows if we shall succeed or we shall fail. Yet I see you are still troubled, so to ease your worries I will talk to you of lagon until the tribe’s preparations to leave are complete.”

“I would like that very much,” Guin said gladly. His curiosity had been piqued by the earlier conversation, and in any case he could do little until the Lagon were ready to depart. It seemed best to sate his curiosity; perhaps the elder’s words would distract him from his worries.

“Aqrra… Aqrra is not a god,” Kah the Wise began slowly. “Nor is Aqrra a living being. Aqrra—that which we call Aqrra— is a place.”

“A place?” Guin said, gasping with surprise. “How can a mere place lead you, let alone show revelations?”

“It can,” Kah said simply, his voice filled with iron faith. “This is because Aqrra is unlike any other place. Even as you said when you spoke before the lagon, it is a place where none may tread. If anyone were to face Aqrra, he would die standing. There are stories of those who have glimpsed Aqrra from afar, and according to these stories, around Aqrra, all is covered with the white bones of man and beast. Step upon them, and the bones shatter; a man’s foot would sink deep into that white valley of death. This is the strange power of Aqrra. Yet as to what it truly is, none can say, for none can step near it.

“Yet each of those fallen bones, every single one, lies in line, pointing toward the center, and whether the morning sun shines upon it or not, Aqrra glows with a strange silvery light, and sometimes eerie voices and sounds not of this world can be heard there.

“Since the very first Kah the Wise of lagon, there have been many hundreds of Kahs, and all of them tell one tale. In this tale, it is said that it was Aqrra who made lagon. Aqrra fell from the sky with a blazing white light on a night as dark as death, and brought fiery ruin to Nospherus. Aqrra’s strength was great, and none could escape it.

“Before the coming of Aqrra, lagon and sem were as one, neither larger nor smaller than the other. Yet when Aqrra descended, the chiefs of our two peoples were destroyed, and when they once again reappeared, they were lagon and sem as we know them today. You see, it was Aqrra who made us, and so lagon serve Aqrra and follow Aqrra’s commands, for we were brought out of death by Aqrra.

“It is also said that Aqrra will one day rage again. When this happens, we lagon will stand and greet Aqrra, and by Aqrra’s tremendous strength, all peoples in all lands but lagon will be turned to white bone. Only lagon, who serve Aqrra, will be forgiven this punishment and saved from the great miasma Aqrra brings.”

Guin breathed deeply. The story was done. It was a strange tale, yet it did not sound like the empty rambling of some wildling fable-teller. Had Guin been at the Lady of Mongaul’s war-pavilion, had he heard there the story of Cal Moru, magus of Kitai, who had crossed Nospherus by foot—the very story that had inspired the Mongauli invasion—he would have been deeply surprised, and alarmed.

Yet Cal Moru’s tale was unknown to him, and he could not divine with any certainty which parts of Kah’s story might be baseless legend, and which parts were a representation, however symbolic, of actual events.

“That is an amazing tale. However—”

Guin had just begun when two Lagon warriors rushed in through the rough-hewn doorway. They were dressed in full battle garb, and they bowed deeply to Guin and Kah before announcing that all the Lagon’s preparations were complete. Then, linking their hands, they picked up Kah the Wise, and began to leave.

“Let us go. We must hurry, now,” Kah said with a wave of his hand. He seemed to have entirely forgotten their conversation of a moment before. “We make for the Wind Hole.”

“The Wind Hole?” Guin asked, but the wildling elder was already on his way out the door.

As Guin hurried out after him, he realized that he knew what it was that had been nagging at him since hearing the elder’s story.

Aqrra... Why did it sound so familiar?

Was it not strangely similar to that word—Aurra—that Guin clung to as a token from his life before he woke beside the Roodspring?

It was yet another enigmatic coincidence.